The Reflecting Pool

Part 4 of the adventure which began below.  Backdated from almost two weeks later, because I'm a really bad person.
 

You may have heard bad things about the Reflecting Pool in the past - it's moldy, it smells, it's full of ducks - and I must confess that those are all true, to one degree or another.  But it does reflect!

This is just before the sun came out (in my post on the Lincoln Memorial), hence the turbulent clouds up about the Washington Monument, but as you can see, the Reflecting Pool does in fact reflect.  Of course, when you get closer up, some of the pool's flaws reveal themselves. It does have ducks swimming in it, and the water is hardly filtered fountain quality, but there is another issue which you seldom hear mentioned:

It leaks.

That silvery thing which you see is not a piece of litter - it's actually a rather sad sandbag, attempting to block a considerably larger leak, which has dug channels into the worn dirt path beside the pool (that's another thing - why aren't there paved paths alongside the Reflecting Pool?  Wouldn't that be more aesthetically pleasing?).  As you can doubtless see, the sandbag isn't up to the job, and the pool will just leak as it pleases here and in a couple of other spots that I passed (this is on the south side of the pool - I can't speak for the north, but I imagine it has leaks as well).  Of course, it's not a problem of terribly pressing importance, since it's just a pool leaking water - it's not like the Washington Monument has begun to lean - but it is, as a friend noted, a bit disappointing.  Actually, her comment was "Eww! You have permanently ruined the image in my head with your reality."

Sorry!